Chris Smith Speaks Out Against One Child Policy

Obama Administration Silent On Forced Abortion

Rep. Chris Smith (R., N.J.) denounced China’s One Child Policy at the National Right to Life Conference on Thursday. "China’s one child policy, in effect since 1979, is state-sponsored cruelty and constitutes a massive crime against humanity," he said.

"Nothing in human history compares to the magnitude of China’s 33-year assault on women and children," Smith said, relaying stories of pregnant women without permits who "are hunted down and forcibly aborted."

One such story revolved around Feng Jianmei, whose story made international news this week. Smith said she called her hospital a prison, and told the audience that her husband has been beaten severely.

"Feng’s treatment, however, is commonplace in China," he said.

Pregnant Chinese women experience great pressure to abort. They know that the government will deny their illegal children education, health care, and marriage. Fines for having an illegal child can amount to "ten times the yearly income of both parents." Those who do not pay face imprisonment or the destruction of their homes.

Smith cited the World Health Organization’s report that 500 women per day commit suicide in China. While in most countries, men have a higher suicide rate than women, that ratio is reversed in China.

"The result of this policy—this Brave New World—has no precedent in human history," Smith said. "There’s a real serious problem of the missing daughters." A national report predicted that, by 2020, there would be 30 million more men of marriageable age than women.

"China has become the human sex-trafficking magnet of the world. … This magnet will even get worse," as more Chinese men will never be able to find a wife. Smith mentioned Valerie M. Hudson’s book Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, which prophesies "an increase in societal instability, marked increases in crime—crimes against women—and the formation of gangs. … Faced with a worsening instability at home … China’s government may well be tempted to use foreign policy to ride the tiger of domestic instability." In the next 20 to 30 years, Hudson warned, China may go to war with Japan or Taiwan.

Smith quoted Vice President Joe Biden, "who told an audience that he was ‘well aware’ of the One Child per couple policy, he ‘fully understood it,’ he said, and that he was not going to second-guess Beijing for proposing it."

"Are you kidding, Mr. Biden?" asked Smith. "The One Child Policy is the most egregious attack on women—ever."

The Obama Administration doesn’t just turn a blind eye, Smith argued. "You and I are supporting it," he said, explaining that the United States gives $50 million per year to the UN Population Fund. This organization "has whitewashed these crimes since the beginning," and "has had the audacity to tell the rest of the world that the Chinese program is a model that needs to be replicated."

Reggie Littlejohn, President of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, addressed the audience after Smith, praising him for greeting the blind activist Chen Guangcheng when he stepped onto U.S. soil on May 19.

Littlejohn shared videos to illustrate the tragedy of China’s One Child Policy. While "no one supports forced abortion because it’s not a choice," Littlejohn noted that the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Family Planning Agency have both worked with China without condemning the policy.

Littlejohn expanded the conversation to India and North Korea. In India and China, boys support their parents in old age, while women leave their parents’ house to live with their husbands’ families. In both countries, "to raise a daughter is to water someone else’s garden."

Sex-trafficking spills into China from North Korea, Littlejohn explained. North Korean girls "get snatched up into the sex slave trade," and if the Chinese government finds them without a visa, it sends them back to North Korea.

"I believe that the One Child Policy is keeping the regime in place," Littlejohn said. She called the family planning police "domestic terrorists."